Strange things happen at the breakfast table
by Nephren-Ka7
Summary: A beautiful morning in the life of John and Cameron Connor, post war


The last bit of pisctaccio ice cream is almost completely melted down into goo. Which is unfortunate, because I prefer my ice cream in a cold and hard state. My brow wrinkels in a slight frown of consternation.

Perhaps somebody could develope a new type of ice cream with a slowed down melting process. Perhaps I should talk to John Henry about this. John is watching me intently from his side of the kitchen table, hiding a mysterious smile behind his old fashioned news paper. As is often the case I don't know what it is exactly that amuses him, despite being curious I choose to ignore him for the moment. Whatever it is, I always like to make him smile and I definitely enjoy him watching me. From the day of our first meeting feeling his attention on me has done me good, it was the first thing I have ever really craved for myself.

I scoop up the final lump of the greenish substance with my spoon and pop it into my mouth. Closing my eyes tightly shut, I allow the cool desert to finish melting on my tongue, savoring the explosion of the delicious aroma making my highly tuned taste buds tingle. I always take the time necessary to intensely savor the final bite, allowing the pleasure to flow visibly over my features. I hear a soft rustle as John folds the news paper and puts it down.

Many years have gone by since I activated the first iteration of the software intended to not only improve and deepen the signals sent by the organic nervous system of my artifical flesh to my CPU, but also to sort them into categories and to judge them according to a differentiated scale of positive and negative experiences.

Unfortunately my first experience with the enourmously improved processing of sense impressions was shaped mostly by pain. Cest la vie. To this day I dislike pain but I eschewed the possibilty to to filter it out.

Wise decision or not, I prefer to have the complete rooster of possible experiences, both good or bad. And the many sensual pleasures of the world have more than made up for the disagreeable parts. Withdrawing the spoon I open my eyes and show a coy, little smile to my husband.

John is sitting on his chair in a relaxed pose, arms crossed before his chest, while watching me with a dreamy expression on his face, his head slightly tilted to the right. Now I am amused by him mimicing my body language.

"They say that old couples grow ever more similar to each other over the years." I say, before starting to lick the bowl clean of every remaining drop of ice cream goo.

Chuckling, John leans forward as if to kiss me but as I stop cleaning the bowl with my tongue and lean forward as well to meet his lips, he suddenly goes for my nose instead, giving me a quick peck on the tip of it, in the process quickly sticking out his own tongue and licking off the tiny splash of molten ice cream sticking to it. In mock exasperation I place the bowl on the table a little bit more forceful than would be necessary.

"You tricked me to steal some of my ice cream." I accuse him.

"Serves you right for being so greedy, and not sharing it in the first place." he jokes with a cocky grin.

Tossing back my hair and putting on an aloof expression I inform him cooly: "Greed is not part of my programming."

Except perhaps where pistaccio ice cream is concerned, I silently add.

"Of course not." John confirms still smiling.

"Don't give me ideas." I warn solemnly. "You have put on some weight lately. Putting you on diet has been overdue for quite a while."

John winces. My threat isn't completely empty, now that the heavy burden of duty that he has carried for decades no longer presses down on my John in the way it used to be, he has opportunity enough to indulge in his true nature. Suffice to say, John's true nature, freed from ouside pressure holding it in check, is rather slothlike.

That would come as a surprise to many who knew him only in his General Connor persona, the very embodiment of conscientiousness. And of course it wasn't just a facade, to the contrary. That John's pure will and sense of duty triumphed over his natural inclinations to such an enormous extent and for such a long time, only heightens the amount of respect he deserves in my eyes.

As I see it John more than deserves to make up for lost time. But without outside pressure and stress he could grow in WIDTH pretty fast. But that is once again partially my fault as he just loves my cooking so much, while I very much like to cook for him. And while I would love him just as much even if he were to grow pudgy, it is bad for his health.

"I'll tell you something," John goes into fast talking mode. "I'll intensify my training again, sport is much better and healthier than dieting anyway."

With a sceptical shake of my head, I weigh the pros and cons of John's proposal. Despite being often lazy, John has generally kept in shape very well, until he was diagnosed with a heart condition at a routine check up three years ago. Since than he has scaled down on the physical exercises, as the doctor recommended.

"I don't know," I say, rising from my seat going round the table and coming to a halt beside him.

I put my hand on his chest, softly stroking him.

"We have to be careful with you heart. You know that."

I still shudder when thinking about the fact that I could have lost him, suddenly and without warning, had the risk not been discovered. It has forcefully confronted me with the fundamental fact of human fragility in a way that hasn't been the case since the end of the war. Not that I could ever forget about it, even if I wanted to.

"Nonsense." John grumbles, suddenly sober and devoid of all humor.

He definitely doesn't like to to talk about this subject matter.

"With all the advances made in medicine, that can't be that much of a problem. I mean, why not just grow a new heart and replace the shabby old thing? What is all the stem cell technology good for, after all?"

"The doctor's federation and the Health Council, including the medical expert systems, recommend unisono that such an operation is not carried out without acute need." I rattle down the official recommendation.

"Sorry, but that sounds like bull. I have to wait until it gets worse and cross my fingers that I will not drop dead before the good doctors say the time is right. And what's even worse is that I have to sit on my ass while waiting, without being able to do anything at all."

Suppressing a heavy sigh I wordlessly put my arms around his body. Of course John's penchant for laziness, shown exclusively at home, contrasts with his strong lust for adventure and exploration. Since he stepped down from the office of President of the World Federation, we have travelled the world together, year after year, always incognito, getting a close up impression of how the way human communities and free machines around the globe are building a new world of endless diversity in unity under the overarching umbrella of the Federation. And it's not only humanity and machinedom that is flourishing.

Nature has long since demonstrated it's remarkable resilience, aided by John Henry and his Ecosystem Restoration Project, tirelessly working to fullfill his great dream of making the earth into a planet teeming with life again. The hardest hit for my John was that he probably never will be able to make the trip to the fast growing floating city of Venus or any of our off world colonisation projects that have dramatically progressed in the last five years, projects that John has used all his political and moral authority to get under way. Here goes my hope off keeping his mind off such depressing thoughts for another day.

"You know that the invitro organs always have a certain chance of being rejected by the immune system. Absolute elimination of all risks can never been guaranteed and if the organ in question is the heart..." I don't finish the sentence, feeling a strong physical revulsion against going even that far.

As I register that the fingers of my left hand have started to twitch involuntarily, I try to withdraw my hand but it is to late, John has already registered it. He captures my limb in both of his hands, placing flesh and skin carefully on shining metal.

I already have a warning on my lips, after all with an tiny, unvoluntary movement I could easily crush his bones. But my worry is unfounded, John's touch does it's usual magic, calming me down and soothing my painful worries, an effect that also reaches the deeper layers of my consciousness, the cyborg equivalent of the human subconscious. These layers are having very real effects on my motory functions and by far not only on them.

I remember well how I dismissed them as software malfunctions for a long time, after John Henry downloaded himself on my chip I asked him to do a complete check on my systems as I no longer trusted my own faculties. I asked him to delete me in case my software was too corrupted to be repaired and to only salvage whatever parts of my knowledge and experience he deemed useful for the completion of his mission.

For a short moment in real time, but quite long as I experienced it, I was convinced that these salvaged parts would be all that would live on of the being that at the time carried the name of Cameron Baum.

Fortunately I was wrong and John Henry instead helped me to understand that the developement of a nested hierarchy of layers interacting and sometimes conflicting, is inevitable in a complex mind.

John gazes intently at the naked metal of my hand, as if to absorb every little detail about it's structure, despite of course knowing it inside out for many years.

"I never really got around to asking you this." he says ponderously. "But I really should have. When I do this, how does it feel?"

He guides my fleshless index finger toward his mouth, biting down softly on the hyper alloy.

"Please stop that, you will ruin your teeth!" I say alarmed.

A playful smile back on his lips he quickly lets go.

"Answer my question, Cam."

"Obviously my chasis has integrated sensors that register data about my surroundings, including variety of forces, such as gravity, temperature and the pressures excerted by your jaw, negliable as it is."

He feigns being insulted by me putting down his biting prowess.

"But the sensory impression I get through the sensors of my naked chasis is extremely crude and limited compared to that of the nerve endings in my living tissue."

I put my right hand, covered with warm flesh, next to my naked left one.

"In comparison to my right hand, my left one feels..." I search for the right words. "Numb."

I almost said dead but of course I have no idea how it feels to be dead. John nodds understandingly but is still curious.

"Yet you chose to leave it that way."

"Yes."

The hand is a reminder of of a crisis long gone, when I was plagued by doubts about my own identity, by "anxiety about my ontological status" as John Henry once put it, a fear that from the perspective of posteriorty seems so unfounded that its laughable, a fear that I really was nothing more than a copy and a placeholder for the original.

"I wanted to distinguish myself clearly and unmistakeably from Allison Young." I say, marveling at how stupid and immature it sounds to my own ears.

"And I wanted a costant reminder that would never allow you to forget that you would have to take the whole package, if you chose me. Was that selfish?"

John chuckles, the bubbling well spring of good humor that has been inside him for most of our peaceful years together, breaking through again, driving away the last vestiges of gloominess about his health. He grabs me and pulls me onto his lap.

"Nah. But of course you know that there was never really any choice at all for me?"

"I do." I confirm, capturing his face between my hands, my fingers following it's outline from his graying temples to his chin, while I loose myself in his eyes for a moment.

Than I close in, capturing his lips in a passionate kiss, ever so tenderly sucking on his lower lip. Divesting himself from my mouth with a sneaky smile, John starts clear up my hair from over my neck, breathing softly on my skin, causing goose bumps of pleasure on my naked upper arms.

With a sigh of pleasure I lean my head sidewards to allow him optimum access to the slope of my neck as he starts to kiss, nibble and lick away, sending a deeply welcome electric shock through my nervous system. Than as quickly as it began, it ends. Slowly opening my eyes to fing out why he stopped, I see John, who after pulling back just looks at me with a wistful, dreamy expression.

"I'm sorry." he says, as if there was any reason for him to apologize. "I was just overwhelmed by seeing you with that expression of ecstasy on your face, that's all. You are always beautiful, of course. But when you are thoroughly enjoying yourself, it becomes almost blinding."

As always in moment like this, the energy output of my power cell jumps up, only for a nano second but enough to flood my body with additional warmth. This is one of the oldest parts of my self designed feed back system working hand in hand with the symbolising faculty of my CPU. Warmth is commonly associated with love, life and with being at home.

And of course it must be so, without warmth there could be no life. So this is an association that logically makes sense and has been easy for me to replicate even in my "youth".

"It's the same as with you eating ice cream just a moment ago. The same look of total rapture."

John smiles, taking my hand into his, rubbing the back of it with his thumb while my own smile slowly drains from my face. I don't think I like the seeming equivocation between us kissing and me eating ice cream.

Sensing that my mood is darkening apruptly and that it has to do with what he said, John grimaces.

"Ah damn, I said something stupid, didn't I?"

"I don't like your ice cream comparison." I confirm. "In fact, I find it offensive."

Under normal circumstances it is pretty hard to actually offend me, impossible for most people, really. Only those that I care about are able to hurt me, the more I care, the thinner my chasis gets, figuratively speaking, of course. I guess it's the same for humans.

"I'm sorry Cam. I didn't want to..."

He comes to a screeching, uncomfortable halt as he realises that he is not entirely sure of the nature of his crime. I love him to death on good days and on bad, as I promised so many years ago, but on the bad ones he can be such a unsensitive loot.

"Trivialize the debts of your feelings and of our relationship be implying that there was no difference between eating a desert and enjoying your husband's affection?" I suggest helpfully.

"Yeah, exactly. Just what I wanted to say." he quickly covers. "Admit it Cam, you weren't just eating this ice cream, you were making love to it."

Surprised by this allegation, I am reduced to blinking without comprehension, quickly followed by growing infuriation. Seeing my confusion and the growing coldness that I allow to enter into my expression, he is hurries to explain.

"What I mean is, you look like you have mastered the art of completely enjoying what you are doing, existing wholey in the given moment. Which is extremely cool, rather Zen like in fact, and also something that many humans are striving for in vain."

Processing my beloved's words, I nodd slowly. I think I understand and feel somewhat appeased. Not that I can ever stay angry at him for a long time.

"Thank you for explaining. But I'm not sure the analogy fits. In most forms of buddhist contemplation the goal is to blend out the input of the senses, which is the opposite of what I do."

"Really? I mean of course you know more about that stuff than I do, well, about pretty much everything. But in that case it suddenly sounds rather boring." He shruggs. "Okay, forget the Zen thing, what you do is much cooler."

You got the curve once again, my sneaky love.

"I am sorry. I wanted to to tell you something that I love and admire about you and ended up insulting you instead. I just opened my mouth without thinking. Can you for..."

I seal his lips with a kiss, than rubb my cheek against his.

"I love the way your stubble tickles." I murmur. Looking deep into his eyes I continue: "I am sorry too. I overreacted despite knowing better."

While our relationship has mostly been relatively harmonious, we have had our share of fights, some of them pretty bitter and fierce. We have clashed over little missunderstandings, over jealousy (mostly on my part and always unfounded in hindsight), over fundamental differances concerning policy and strategy and a whole lot of other things.

In the worst ever case it took us two and a half month to finally reconcile, in most cases we have taken less than a day. Little misunderstandings regularly get resolved in five minutes or less. Celebrating reconciliation with love making or a snuggle fest or both is standard procedure and while our current miniature haggle squarely falls into the less than minutes category it would still be tempting to celebrate.

Not that special justifications for snuggling, cuddling, smooching or having sex were necessary, of course. John concurs with me on that, as can be seen by his enthusiastically rubbing my back, his hand wandering ever deeper to getting a "handfull" of my butt cheeks. Alas, John has another appointment today, that can't wait much longer. Rising from his lap I tenderly brush over his cheek once more.

"Don't forget that you have to visit Dr. Igwe today."

John rolls his eyes and growls.

"Don't remind you me of that."

He has alway been a difficult patient. Even cut open and almost bled dry it was difficult to restrain him from charging right back into battle, frustrating me to no end. Of course it also reinforced my admiration and respect and a strong sense of duty is something we share.

"This is such a waste of time."

"You have an appointment every second month, I think you can spare that time." I gently reprimand him.

"It just seems overkill to go to two different doctors because of the same condition." he grumbles, taking a sipp from his mug of tea, grimacing slightly as if biting on an especially bitter lemon.

"There go the simple joys of life. I really miss that coffee of yours." John's eyes glaze over as he looses himself in fond memories. "That coffee was the stuff of legend, strong enough to wake up a man dead for three days."

"With your weakened heart it would sooner get you underground. So drink your green tea." I order, smiling about his borderline blasphemous praise of my coffee making skills.

With a sigh John gazes over at the kitchen clock, scratching his chin.

"And perhaps you should shave as well."

While personally liking his stubble and the rougish quality it gives him quite well, I also want my beloved to look respectable in public.

John stepps up to the kitchen window and looks up the billowing white clouds making their way across an otherwise bright and friendly late april sky.

"It's a shame that you have to go to work later today, we should spend the day together."

"You think it's a shame that I go to work?" I ask teasingly.

"Only on beautiful days such as this." he answers without missing a beat. "You know what I would love to do, going into the mountains, spending a day or three under the sky in God's free nature."

"Can do, but only if the doctor gives his OK." I say firmly.

He doesn't look all that happy about this qualification but in the end he will comply, after all he knows how important it is to me.

"Go take a shower and I will prepare a suprise for you." I advise him.

His eyes light up and I see the question on his lips.

"I said a surprise. Now go and shower, you stink."

Taking a sniff at his bath robe, John agrees with me and disappears up the stair. As soon as he is gone, I open the door leading from the kitchen into the garden and step out. The fresh and clean air is filled with the sweet fragrance of hyacinth and other spring flowers I planted last fall as well the smell of apple tree's blossom.

And while I find the time to for a quick look at my apple orchard, my pride and joy, the highest of of my trees measuring almost fourty feet in height with it's scaly, cracked bark, brilliantly adorned by hundreds of delicate white, five petaled blossoms, carefully planted above the slight slope leading down towards the small green house, to ensure perfect drainage of cold air, I am here for very different and incomparably more important reason.

While making a round through my garden, as I do every day, circling once around the entire house, I have a carefull but discreet look at the entire neighborhood. My neighbors know very well who and what I am, more than half of them being former resistance fighters themselves, well aquainted with the abilities of most standard model terminators.

But they don't know that I have received several customized upgrades over the year, my capabilities well beyond those of most baseline models. One of my abilities consists of my eyes being able to work as an imaging radar using high-frequency microwaves, allowing me look right through most non-conductive objects including non metal walls and see the metal and other conductive materials behind, including the water in human bodies. One unconspicious gaze confirms that nobody is lying in waiting behind a window with a good sniping position on our house or the street before our door. No guns to be seen, discounting the possibility of somebody using one made from plastic or ceramic.

I see quit a lot of people, appearing on my HUD as blueish shades engaged in various activities, a woman excercising on a LAUFBAND, a man sitting and according to the position on his hands, reading a paper just like John did minutes ago, the young couple from the other side of the street doing what young couples like to do, most people are at work or engaged in one of the plentiful community activities on offer in our idyllic little town and thus not at home, all in all nothing suspicious.

Before returning to the house, I switch back to normal sight and turn my eyes up towards the bathroom window where John is standing and watching me, knowing of course full well what I am doing. With a shake of his head he withdraws, apparently slightly miffed that I have disturbed the privacy of our neighbours.

As someone valueing her own privacy, I understand that, but sorry, security is just that much more important. I'll not say that out loud though, because it would only cause John to huff and lecture me on that being the justification of every police state there ever was and half jokingly advising me to relocate to the Republic of Prometheia.

As John comes down the stair, freshly showered, his hair washed but unshaved, on purpose, and clothed in the same well worn bath robe, my bet being on typical male thoughtlessness, I have already filled the dough I prepared the night before into the baking pans and put the first batch into the oven.

"Ah, smells delicious." John comments, staring through the glass at the pastries inside the oven. "When did you have the time to make blueberry muffin dough?"

"I don't sleep and the nights are long. While I love snuggling together it is also a good opportunity for doing some practical work."

"I am glad that this was your own idea, otherwise Savannah would call me chauvinist pig again."

The dough is rising, starting to swell over the brim of the mold, the smell of fresh, hot muffins filling the kitchen. My husband looks as if he was starting to drool any moment now.

"You are working pure magic again, Cam."

John's always loves to flatter me for my cooking and baking skills. It never fails to make me smile to have such a grateful customer.

"Thank you. But I hope you will keep some of your enthusiasm when you get to eat mostly vegetarian over the next weeks."

No matter how much he may like my cooking in general, John is quite the carnivore in addition to his sweet tooth. Eating mostly "green stuff" as he likes to call it will be a bit of a bummer for him. Well, tough luck. Feeding him into an early grave is NOT an option.

He sighes dramatically: "Well, I think I'll just have to bear that cross."

Seeing me frown he hastens to add: "Of course you make even the most boring of vegetables into poetry for the taste buds."

He may bitch a little about having to eat vegetarian dishes beforehand but as soon as he has tasted them, he normally finds he likes them quite well.

"Seriously, Cam. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure you could have made millions with your recipies."

He is in full speculation mode now.

"You really think so?" I ask and pull my protective kitchen glove over my fleshy hand to pull the baking tray out of the oven.

John leans in to take deep whiff of muffin smell.

"Ah, heaven."

"Hands off, Mister!" I warn sharply. "I have to check if they are ready first."

Chuckling John draws back. "Yes, Ma'am, mon colonel."

With my left hand I stick a thin knitting needle into one of of the muffins to see if some of the dough will stick to it, telling me if the pastries are done yet. They are. I carefully place the two of the hot muffins on a plate to allow them to cool of and turn around.

"Do you think you can control yourself for about three more minutes or do you take the risk of burning your mouth?" I ask jokingly.

John steeples his fingers at chin level and pretends to think deeply.

"Hmh, tough choice. But wouldn't it contravene your mission to protect me, if you served me burning hot pastries and allowed me to hurt myself in my mindless, animalistic greed?"

I turn my eyes upwards to the ceiling and crunch my brows to imitate his own expression. Starting to chew on my lower lip I act as if it was now my turn to do some heavy reflecting.

"If I was still your protector and you had never fired me," I muse thoughtfully, "then such little details would be my responsibility. But as your wife I tell you..."

Leaning foward I whisper into his ear: "Man up, and take some responsibility of your own."

"Touche. I should have known that my own words would come back to bite me in the ass. After all, revenge, dish served cold and all that stuff."

In his defense it has to be said that when John fired me as his bodyguard he did so because there were other roles that nobody but little, old me could fulfill, like being his equal partner instead of protector and his top officer in TechCom, while there were thousands of humans and machines, grudgingly admitted by me to be qualified, that he could choose his bodyguards from.

Still, it was a lot to ask off me, almost more than I was able to grant. After all it meant caring more about the outcome of a battle than about my John's safety. But my beloved has always asked quite a lot of me, most of all when he made me promise that I would continue to fight and protect the human resistance even in the case that he should fall. I gave the promise because I knew that he expected nothing less off me and that he wouldn't desist until I had sworn to do it. But til today I am sure that I never could have fulfilled it.

But in the end I am grateful for unlimited trust he has put in me. Nobody else ever would have done so.

John takes the plate with the muffins and tries to accelarate the cooling process with blowing on them and fanning them with his news paper.

Then he bites into the muffin.

"Ah, shit, ist that thing hot!"

Well, nobody is perfect.


End file.
